I think I understand why John Kerry went to Iraq. It wasn’t exactly for the reasons he said, although I’m sure he did want to express his gratitude to all the soldiers and the Massachusetts National Guard troops in particular. Nor was it merely opportunistic, an attempt for personal political gain so he can position himself for another presidential run in 2008. Kerry went to Iraq because he is still a soldier, and he is continuing to fight the war that he began as a young man.

The war that Kerry is fighting is not a military conflict, but a cultural one. It is the war against the "good" soldier.

What is a Good Soldier?

The American idea of a "good" soldier, created by the military and fully absorbed by most civilians, is a wholly obedient soldier. Our armed forces are not particularly concerned with creating comparatively clever soldiers that can think on their feet, as some other militaries are. Our soldiers are taught how to carry out directives and how to move the enemy's body count higher. Period. There is apparently no discussion of the ethics of warfare; the military prefers that our soldiers see themselves as combatants for the U.S., as opposed to protectors of all civilians and their allegedly inalienable rights. Right and wrong is whatever their commanding officers say it is.

By contrast, an actual good soldier, one with a conscience who fights for the safety and freedom of all people, needs to believe certain things. He must believe that his army and his government are acting righteously, that they follow the rules of war, and they are ultimately fighting to make the world a better place. When those beliefs are shaken, his image of himself as a good person whose actions will lead to a better future is shattered. This is what happened to Kerry in Vietnam, which is why he later led a group of anti-war veterans and threw his ribbons away. Thus began his fight for morality in the military and in its civilian commanders

I know a soldier who had a similar experience: a friend who's spent 20 years in the Australian military, 15 in the Special Air Service. He went to Afghanistan only days after September 11, and last spring was in Iraq for four months.

He came back dejected. He had already related to me his experiences in Afghanistan, about having to tell US soldiers not to abuse detainees, that we were the good guys because we followed certain rules. In Iraq, it had been even worse.

"We’re supposed to hand the country over to them, but what are we handing over?" he complained. "They have nothing. The infrastructure’s gone, and we can’t give them any security. They do want us there, but they want us there to keep them safe."

"I didn’t join the SAS to kill people," my friend continued. "I joined the SAS to defend people who couldn’t defend themselves. The Americans don’t understand that; they only want to destroy the enemy."

He’d never talked about his combat experiences like this before. The prisoner abuse scandal had just broken, and it appeared that our clearly overwhelmed reservists and overzealous military intelligence people were doing horrible things to detainees, due in part to the fact that our Secretary of Defense had not read a cautionary report sent to him by the Red Cross, because, and I quote, "… it was too long."

Just Following Orders

Eight months and one election later, many more abuse claims have surfaced, from Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Some are allegations from former prisoners, others stem from government documents released as the result of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits. Stories include prisoners being beaten, drugged, sexually assaulted, sleep-deprived, and shackled in uncomfortable positions for as long as 24 hours.

Several dozen detainees have died in US custody. (Countless others may have died outside of US custody. The Washington Post reported that prisoners have been taken out of the country to places like Indonesia, Jordan, and Pakistan so they could be interrogated by agents of governments significantly less scrupulous than even our own.) Moreover, it’s been reported that medical personnel were required to assist the interrogators, an obvious breach of both medical ethics and the accepted laws of war.

There has also been a long and disturbing pattern of cover-ups. Reporters and Department of Defense personnel who witnessed abuse had their e-mails monitored and were subsequently warned by the military officers not to disclose what they had seen. Even long-time military personnel themselves were not exempt from reprisal; Salon.com recently reported that Col. C. Tsai, an Army doctor, told German television network Spiegel that he had treated four or five perfectly normal soldiers who were flown to Germany’s Landstuhl Army Base for psychiatric evaluation after reporting incidents of abuse to commanding officers.

FBI agents at Guantanamo were also troubled by the interrogators' behavior, and apparently wrote numerous memos to superiors detailing what had occurred. One agent confronted Guantanamo commander Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Miller about the interrogation procedures, and reported that Miller had told him that the military, "has their marching orders from the Sec. Def."

The Sec Def has yet to be fired.

Tales of torture are greeted with a shrug by the media and much of America. President Bush’s "good friend" Rush Limbaugh again referred to the actions at Abu Ghraib as "a fraternity prank". The man who crafted the policy on the treatment of detainees and dubbed the resolutions of the Geneva Convention "quaint" has become the new Attorney General. This tremendous collective apathy sends a clear message to the Bush administration that they can do abominable things and get away with it, provided their noise machine is at full throttle.

Obedience vs. Ethics

Even well-documented facts can be obscured with the right amount of bombast. In February, the ultimate obedient soldiers, Swift Boat Veterans and POWs for Truth will receive the "Courage Under Fire" award at a banquet hosted by the Conservative Political Action Conference. Zell Miller, who was tapped to present this honor, said of the group, "[They] performed an invaluable service to America . . . These veterans took a lot of undeserved criticism for daring to speak the truth."

This bizarre notion, and the fact that the Swift Boat Vets and their message have been embraced by Republican and perhaps a significant percentage of the electorate, does not bode well for the cause of ethical warfare. Kerry was targeted by this group not because of what he did in Vietnam, but for what he did afterwards. He had the audacity to testify in front of the Senate in 1971 because he thought that shooting women and children and burning villages to the ground qualified as war crimes.

Kerry believed, as my friend does, that morality is an essential part of being a good soldier, and morality trumps the idea of loyalty and obedience by way of silence. The fact that he publicly stood up for this ideal decades ago may have cost him the presidency at a time when the country desperately needs a Commander-in-Chief who understands this principle.

So the long war of John Kerry continues, not because we continue to rehash Vietnam, but because we refused to learn anything from it. We are still, as Kerry said in his testimony more than thirty years ago, in the grip of the "John Wayne syndrome," masculinity and patriotism through brutality and racism. Safeguarding freedom and justice and the protection of innocent civilians apparently are not ideas that become ingrained in the hearts and minds of many recruits.

War without ethics leads to victory without honor, or defeat without dignity. Which of these outcomes befalls the US in Iraq, or even the larger fight against terrorism, remains to be seen. Given the fact that the Iraqi director of intelligence believes insurgents and their sympathizers now outnumber US troops on the ground, a favorable resolution seems far off at best. Only time will tell if the US will score lasting military triumphs while suffering severe moral failures. And only time will tell if the good soldiers have lost the battle or the war.

Liz Larocca is a freelance writer. She was recently published in Salon.com.

© 2005 Intervention Magazine

###